No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM Kenexa vs SAP SuccessFactors comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Kenexa
Ranking in Talent Management
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (16th), Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software (10th)
SAP SuccessFactors
Ranking in Talent Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Cloud HCM (2nd), Talent Acquisition (2nd), Global Payroll (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Talent Management category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 9.2%, down from 20.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Talent Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP SuccessFactors9.2%
IBM Kenexa1.6%
Other89.2%
Talent Management
 

Featured Reviews

Karan Grover - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Suitable for larger-scale companies aiming to streamline and automate their processes digitally
The deployment of the solution took between six to eight months. When we introduced BrassRing at my company, we encountered several challenges. First, moving data from our old system to BrassRing was tough because it needed reformatting. Second, connecting BrassRing with our HR data was tricky due to manual processes for roles and departments. Third, setting up the workflow in BrassRing was complex. Fourth, configuring user access and approval levels was a detailed task. We also had to manage the change process, including running both old and new systems in parallel, communicating changes, and training users. Lastly, monitoring and reporting were needed to ensure data accuracy and proper system usage once everything was in place. We had a team of six to eight people managing the project from our side during the BrassRing deployment. I'm not sure about the size of the BrassRing team, and we also had our own technical team, which had three to four members. The solution required maintenance, particularly from my side as the administrator. Maintenance responsibilities were divided into two parts: some tasks we, as end-users, could control, while others were the responsibility of the BrassRing team. Payment-related tasks were a regular part of our responsibilities. I wasn't the only person maintaining the solution. There were three power users from Infosys, each responsible for a specific geography. My counterpart managed it in the US, and I, along with my colleague in India, managed it for other geographies.
SS
Assistant Manager at Kashiv Biosciences
HR has gained clear analytics for attrition, goals, and appraisals and manages talent efficiently
SAP SuccessFactors has a low error rate. We had many ad hoc reports that we needed to generate, and it was very easy to do so in SAP SuccessFactors. We also created many in-house reports according to our specific requirements with the help of this tool, which was a really big game changer for us. We did not depend on advanced Excel in those cases. We generated a lot of detailed reports whenever we needed them during emergency cases or board meetings. A lot of usefulness and time were saved in those cases. I will also mention that we conducted a comparative study for some recruitment cases. We had a recruitment model where we were looking for a very niche profile. Since the job profile was really different and rare, we had to depend on analytics to understand and shortlist from a large pool of candidates that we already had in our database. Analytics was really helpful in this situation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The ability now to be able to take data, load it yourself, ask the business questions and get the answers on your own process with the business just made it a lot faster, and the cognitive solution gives us some insights for us to think about."
"For us in particular, I love how configurable the system is; I can use the same technology for different parts of my business."
"Kenexa’s scalability has been great, as we can grow and expand our use no matter what and seamlessly incorporate our business process for new launches."
"It is extremely user friendly. It is very flexible in managing recruitment, especially when you have thousands of applicants as we did. We easily had over 20,000 applicants within a year for some of our positions, so it made it very easy to manage a large application pool. It was very easy to customize by recruiter preference. When you open up someone's profile to see their experience, education, or other things, you can customize that for yourself. It was flexible in that, and each recruiter could set up their preferences. It didn't have to be set up so that everyone had to have the same landing platform, which was very helpful. As someone who trained other HR people on how to use the system, it was very easy to pick up and learn."
"I like how we can copy a req as we have many duplicates, which saved a lot of time when opening reqs."
"We felt like Kenexa was robust enough and dynamic enough that it met our needs, so it didn't make sense for us to disrupt 700 locations and reteach them something."
"Now, having provided this, amongst many other things, we have a much closer relationship to the business."
"As I said, IBM are doing a great job with us at the moment, but we're always looking and speaking and open to having conversations with other people because the market's changing and IBM are aware of that."
"The main advantage of SuccessFactors is its ability to add many types of integrations within the SAP Cloud platform, where many useful modules can be implemented alongside SuccessFactors as third-party integrations, and this capability to extend the system is a big plus."
"It covers all the everyday functions of the employee life cycle."
"It has a global database, and it is globally accessible with the integration with the management."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten...It is a stable solution."
"The functionality and user friendliness are constantly improving."
"The performance of the solution is very good."
"This solution support our HR Transformation strategy. Provide ESS and MSS functionalities to employees."
"All of SuccessFactors' features are useful, but there are several modules within SuccessFactors that I find handy. You have Employee Central, which manages employee records within the system. It manages all the information about an employee, including names, addresses, account numbers, positions, org charts, etc. It also handles performance reviews and KPIs for employees within an organization. Then you have succession planning and development as well."
 

Cons

"I'm just taking over the account, so I'm still pretty new to the whole system."
"Once-a-year engagement kind of seems to be a little bit lagging in terms of how we can actually shape and improve organizations, so I was looking forward to understanding a bit more where IBM Kenexa's thinking is going in terms of pulsing with the employee voice and how that kind of integrates and works with tell-it-as-it-is, and the other two applications we have; it's just too early to know."
"Maybe there's some room for improvement in the functionality around the actual tools that we build with."
"We're really looking forward to some of their enhancements to their onboarding portal, specifically for recruiters and hiring managers."
"The team didn't find the reporting tool that easy to use, in terms of pulling their own data, slicing and dicing it, combining groups."
"The downside is it's a system that was created many, many years ago and so it just evolves."
"The user interface could do with an overhaul."
"I would like to have a better and more user-friendly interface."
"Integration between Employee Central and Compensation in SAP SuccessFactors is one area of the solution that has room for improvement."
"The complete integration process between SuccessFactors modules is not at the level that all customers expect when it comes to complete HR user experience from all angles."
"SAP SuccessFactors' pricing structure could be improved."
"LMS, Learning Management Systems, needs improvement because there were some stability problems."
"For SAP, the product is pricey, both CAPEX and the OPEX."
"There are a few features that are missing. There are specific features on the HTM, such as telecom safety, that just isn't there. It's not a very detailed solution in that sense. However, it is maybe not expected to have those kinds of features on the surface level of the product."
"SuccessFactors' experience management is not so user-friendly - the launch through the initial dashboard is okay, but when you do a deep dive into certain applications or specific scenarios, the navigation needs to be improved."
"The pricing is a bit high for smaller to mid-sized companies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kenexa was fairly priced. However, in 2019, before I left my previous organization, they significantly increased their pricing. It can be affordable, but their pricing is going up. It is not just licensing; it is how many applicants you have in your system on the database side."
"I have raised change requests for some modules within SuccessFactors. For example, when you're using Recruiting Management, there's a feature called Interview Central you can use to reach the candidates you're interviewing. I wanted to add a writing assessment when I select the competency on that platform. It varies from consultant to consultant, depending on what module they use."
"We are on an annual subscription to use SAP SuccessFactors. The pricing model is something that they could restructure a bit better. If it was based differently on the type of usage it would help."
"We don't utilize even half of the licenses because not everyone uses them. With SAP SuccessFactors, though, we're now conducting all our performance evaluations within the system, so I suppose we're making better use of those licenses. As for SAP for employee services and internal benefits processing, we do have licenses for those but don't utilize them."
"Due to the way in which we purchased SuccessFactors as a module along with other SAP modules, we were able to procure it at a slightly better price than usual. I would rate their pricing 5/5 stars."
"We have a yearly license. There are no additional costs."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
"I don't want to comment on the license cost, to be honest. It could be about $1,000 approximately per customer. However, it's very flexible in terms of the licensing costs depending on the volume and depending on the deal of installation."
"The pricing for SuccessFactors is ridiculously high, and there are costs in addition to the license fee for some features."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Talent Management solutions are best for your needs.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?
Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customization to suit the purpose." SAP: Multiple functionalities that increase process effi...
What is better, SAP HCM or SAP SuccessFactors?
When it comes to user experience, SuccessFactors is unquestionably superior, as it provides end users with a new experience and an advanced user interface. Additionally, the entire concept of SF is...
How easy is to maintain Workday, Oracle Cloud, and SuccessFactors?
I implemented Workday in 2024 and without having previous Workday experience, it was very challenging. I spent most of 2025 putting out fires and cleaning up the business processes that came with l...
 

Also Known As

IBM Smarter Workforce, Outstart
SuccessFactors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sweet Spot International (SSI), Leo Burnett Worldwide (LBW), Sika AG, Legacy Health, Apollo Group Inc., Regeneron, Transurban Group, National Health Service, New Zealand Police, Overland Footwear, Yealands, Johnson Controls, Allscripts, Kerry Foods, Masterpet, AMD, Balfour Beatty
City of Cape Town, ADAMA Agricultural Solutions Ltd., TransAlta Corporation, Keolis, PT XL Axiata Tbk, National Football League (NFL), Plan International, Yoh, A Day & Zimmermann Company, China Talent Group (CTG TMO), Umicore S.A., Butterfield Bank, Skril
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Kenexa vs. SAP SuccessFactors and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.